A hint of an answer is heard in an apparently innocent little contest, when the girl was very young, between Swede's father and his wife's Roman Catholic mother for the soul of their granddaughter... read more
Fitzgerald doesn't make it entirely clear what draws Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis's real name) to little Sophie?but that is precisely the point... read more
Along the way she creates a female golem who makes Puttermesser Mayor of New York but who also grows gigantic and has to be unmade when her sexual appetites exhaust the Mayor's entire administration... read more
Turnbull's journal is like ''Walden'' gone haywire; Ben is brilliantly observant of nature, but if Thoreau's gaze is innocent, Ben's is a gritty-eyed squint... read more
The sweep is vast: in eight chapters he canvasses the theory of the Big Bang, the dynamism of the universe, the shape of space, the origins of the chemical elements,.. read more
